Quote Originally Posted by tigershilone View Post
Last Flash-Arc awareness class I had was a couple years ago and they covered clothing pretty extensively (class was a disguised sales pitch to my company to sell FR rated tools, clothes, suits, books etc etc. Must of worked because we bought a few sets of different rated suits and the building mx guys are issued FR clothing sets)

To keep the FR rating the clothing has to be specially laundered in chemical cleaning/treating, otherwise starts to lose FR resistance with each wash. If I recall correctly somewhere around 15-20 washes is where the tipping point of where the effective FR starts to degrade significantly.
Yep and the 1st thing we all did is pour the fabric softener to them...lol I'd wash and dry mine multiple times before I'd ever wear them to try to get them to soften up a little which was bad for the protection. I was a believer in the face shields though, I had a breaker blow up on me years before the 1st FR clothing was issued. Then it was just a pair of coveralls to put over your clothes but a few years after it evolved to wearing the pants and shirts.